Thursday, August 07, 2008

Village Fetes (and Wallis Bird)

Last weekend we had a lovely family day at the Innocent Village Fete in Regents Park. It's a nice idea to take a big green space in the centre of London and do an old fashioned village fete (complete with ferret racing, welly throwing and scones) and add in some good live music (Wallis Bird - our absolute favourite singer songwriter at the moment) and a helter skleter and other kid-friendly rides.

As part of the site to promote the event, there's a handy Fete Finder which will help you find an actual village (or school) fete in your area. And although their fete blog is currently preoccupied with celebrating their own event, it also acts as a nice celebration of fete culture in general.

I thought that fetes would be the sort of things which appeal to I Like Old Shops so I emailed Anne who runs that site to ask if she knew of any other sites which celebrate this particularly British custom. Anne says: "Not sure if this is in the right ballpark but Strange Britain is good for customs and weird folklore and Wacky Nation does similar. There's also a good book by Iain Aitch called A Fete Worse Than Death that covers the same ground."

If you've never heard Wallis Bird, do listen to the songs on her MySpace page. The songs are good on cd, but live she's exceptional - a bundle of charisma and a fantastic performer. One of the songs from her set in Regents Park on Saturday has already turned up on YouTube - Click on the play button on the right of this text to enjoy.